The German baritone Matthias Goerne is London's darling right now, having scored a huge success last month with his British operatic debut in the Royal Opera's Wozzeck. So last night's recital would have seemed an obvious opportunity to highlight the breadth of his abilities, to reassert his pre-eminence in the Lieder repertoire with which he made his name. In the event, it did neither.

The focal point was, in fact, an operatic excerpt - not just any, but Wotan's Farewell, the potentially heartbreaking 20 minutes of the Ring cycle in which Wagner's king of the gods takes a final leave of his errant daughter.

Wotan isn't a role Goerne's likely to sing on stage. It wasn't that he found it prohibitively low, and the middle section was beautifully tender. But at the declamatory opening and close he pushed his voice until it sounded hoarse. More seriously, he didn't seem to have anything extraordinary to communicate, didn't seem to identify with the character. Why had he chosen the piece? The impression was that he thought was something he would enjoy singing and the audience would like to hear - both true. But, in this hallowed hall, that's not enough.

Eric Schneider has seemed an unequal match for Goerne in the past, but in the Wagner at least he gave a sterling performance; the falling chords as Wotan kissed his daughter goodbye were magical. It been a cunning move to ease us in to the idea of Wagner played on the keyboard with Liszt's Walhall, a short fantasy for piano solo on themes from the Ring.

Goerne had begun in more characteristically considered style. Both performers could have made more of the quick silver mood swings of the ichenfantasie by the teenage Schubert, yet the churchy miniatures of Beethoven's Gellert Lieder were well judged. As in the Wagner, Goerne sang from a score; though he didn't refer to much, it was still a barrier, and a reminder that he wasn't quite living the songs.

Poised, thoughtful, arrestingly beautiful - Goerne performance was all of these. But it remained curiously, stubbornly, uninvolving.